A Killing Sky (17 page)

“Did you know she was a diabetic?”

Carol Upwood and I leaned against the fender of her white Mustang parked in front of the hotel. After calling for help, I'd dialed the front desk and told Bebo to expect an ambulance and to direct the paramedics up to Lemminger's room. Then I'd tried Bill Ferrier, but Carol had answered his phone instead, saying Bill had told her he was headed up to D.C.— which I hoped meant he might be working something behind the scenes for me. Two paramedics and a pair of firemen had come and gone, checking vitals, hooking Diane Lemminger up to an IV, and whisking her away. The hood of Carol's Mustang was still warm.

“Nope. I found the insulin with her name on it in the bathroom. They'll probably want to check and make sure it's okay,” I said.

“You think she just screwed up her dose or what?”

“I don't know, but I've got some concerns.”

I told her about Dworkin's visit.

“You sure it was Drummond's chief of staff?” she said.

“I'd put money on it, and I'm not a betting man.”

“All right,” she said. “I'm going to want to talk to the guy inside to verify the description. I'm sure you've also got some speculation as to motive.”

I couldn't tell her about my observation of Diane Lemminger out at Drummond's place the night before, of course, but I described my most recent conversation with the congressman and dropped hints about the TV exposé on which she had been working.

Carol heaved a sigh. “I know what Ferrier would say if he was here: ‘We'd all better walk pretty careful on this one, pal.’ “

She glanced over at the silver Taurus. The agents inside had stirred a little at the sight of me exiting the hotel with the paramedics and Lemminger on the stretcher. One punched a number and spoke rapidly on a cell phone.

“You guys may've been bounced off the Cartwright Drummond case, but this is still your jurisdiction. I'm talking about attempted murder here.”

“I understand.” She shook her head. “Can't wait to see what happens when Abercrombie hears about this. What am I going to tell him?”

“You'll think of something.”

“I'm still not clear how you managed to tail Lemminger here to the hotel.”

“Trust me. You don't want to know, Carol. The important thing is, she might be dead now if I hadn't,” I said.

She grunted in disgust. “The last guy who asked me to trust him turned out to be a child molester.”

“What can I say? You've never been married, have you?” I knew she'd had an on-again off-again boyfriend for a few years.

“Nope. Not sure I'll ever want to be, either.”

“Just wondering. You ever think about what it'd be like to have a child?”

A breeze stirred the decorative landscaping at the base of the building and blew a lock of hair across her eyes. She brushed it back, and a smile appeared on her lips. Maybe it was a sad smile. “Of course,” she said.

“Seems to me kids usually trust their parents.”

“That's true.”

“But when that trust is broken … I don't know.”

“What's that got to do with Diane Lemminger?”

I shrugged. “Maybe nothing.”

“You're up to something, Pavlicek. I can smell it. You'd better be careful it doesn't come back to bite you.”

I gave her my best innocent stare.

She flexed her arms against the car. “Lemminger's a pretty well-known person. Once she hits the ER at the hospital and they realize who she is, this'll be all over the news.”

“Hopefully they'll keep us out of it,” I said.

“Hopefully.” She snickered and looked at her watch. “You know, if you'd let Bill and me in on some of your secrets, maybe we could help.”

“Thanks for the thought, Carol.”

“Bill told me about the little chat you and he had earlier,” she said.

“You think that's why he's gone to D.C.?”

“He wouldn't say.”

“Hey,” I said, “thank you. You didn't have to come.”

“Thanks yourself. Remember what I said about Abercrombie.”

She hopped in the Mustang and the engine roared to life. I stepped away as she nodded at me and zoomed out of the lot.

Plans change.

The guys in the Taurus turned out to be not as easy to ditch as their backups. This time I chose the rural approach, a short patch of abandoned logging road that runs along the back side of Carter's Mountain not too far from Jefferson's Monticello. I shifted the Ford into four-wheel low and hit the dirt with some speed. Even with our ground clearance, the run was treacherous at forty miles per hour.

“You know,” Toronto said, after one particularly big jolt that ricocheted his head off the ceiling, “I'm kind of fond of my teeth in their present location.” You had to give the FBI agents credit—they hung in there for half a mile or so. It might have been a blown tire, a stump, or a broken axle that grounded them. I didn't stick around to call AAA.

A steady drizzle began as we drove out 250 toward Ivy. Fog descended and all but obliterated the pastures and trees and homes we passed. Despite the pea soup, about half a mile from Tor Drummond's place, I clicked the headlights to high beam and left them there.

The gate was closed and locked, as it had been the night before. But now, instead of sneaking in the back, we drove right up to the stone pillars. Toronto jumped out with an oversized pair of bolt cutters, quickly snapped the chain, pulled the wrought-iron gate open, and hopped back in the cab.

“That oughta get somebody's attention,” he said.

He was right. I had just punched the stick shift into second gear when the incandescent beams of the Suburban, coupled with amber fogs, shot into our eyes, headed down the driveway from above to block our path.

“I hate guys who hide behind big bumpers,” Toronto said.

“Not me with the Ford, I hope.”

“Nah. You're on the cusp. I give you a pass.”

The larger vehicle rushed down at us. For a second, I thought a game of chicken might be appropriate, but then I thought better of it and let us coast uphill until we stopped. The Suburban suddenly braked too.

An even more blinding beam from a spotlight sticking out of the Suburban's passenger window broke across Toronto's face. He didn't flinch.

“Please step out of the vehicle!”

The voice spoke through a bullhorn.

Toronto shrugged. I shrugged. We opened our respective doors and stepped out into the rain.

I slipped on my coffee-colored outback hat, which, next to my long yellow slicker, might have made me look like the Marlboro Man, if my jaw had been more square. Jake had donned only a Virginia Tech wind-breaker over his sweatshirt and jeans for the occasion. His .45 in its shoulder holster was hard to miss.

Turnip and Robot climbed down out of the Suburban onto the crushed stone too. They both wore olive trench coats, no headgear. The Robot balanced a pump-action shotgun in his hands, pointed at the ground, as if it were a baton. It wasn't quite the shootout at the OK Corral, but the four of us did meet face-to-face in the blinding light somewhere between the bumpers. Drizzle, made visible in the brightness, swirled all around us like cold dust.

“Forcible entry,” Turnip said. “That's a mistake.”

Toronto shrugged. I shrugged.

“The congressman's not at home.”

“Really? Well, I guess you two fine fellows will have to do, then,” I said.

“That a fact? Who's your buddy?”

“His name's Jake Toronto. Don't worry. He's not quite as mean as he looks.” I tried to say this with a smile.

Turnip wasn't buying. His staring companion stifled a twitch.

I didn't look at Toronto, but I could almost imagine his mouth twisting into a sardonic half-grin.

“Had a chat with a woman a little earlier today named Diane Lemminger. You two know who she is, don't you?”

Both tried the blank-stare routine. Turnip's companion had a hard time pulling it off, however. He rolled his tongue around inside his mouth as if he was about to bite it off, and it made his cheek bulge.

I went on. “I understand she talked with you two gentlemen as well, just last night, which surprised me, knowing how loyal you are to your boss and all.”

“She tell you that?” Turnip asked.

“Maybe not in so many words.”

“Maybe you two was the ones broke in out here last night.”

I smiled. “Or we could just be good at following people.”

He folded his arms across his chest and glared down at us. The incline of the driveway put the two security guards about half a foot above Toronto and me.

“Say we did talk with Lemminger,” he said. “So what?”

“She's run into a problem. She was taken to the hospital in a diabetic coma.”

The guards stood impassively in the rain. The rain had started to trickle in streams down their faces.

“We don't know nothing about no diabetic coma.”

“No? Then what was Mel Dworkin doing visiting her room just before she came down with the blackout routine?”

They didn't answer.

“Oh, and the cops might be interested in what you three were talking about last night, right here, at about this same spot, in between your headlights and hers.”

Robot started backing away toward their truck.

“Hey, where you going?” his companion said.

The bigger man suddenly looked scared. “I didn't sign on for this kind of crap,” he said under his breath.

Clearly, Turnip faced a situation. His wingman was deserting him, right in the face of the enemy.

“You boys hold on for just a second,” he said. Then he turned and caught up with his partner. They kept their backs to us and their voices low, but Turnip gestured violently with his hands and words hissed out like a pent-up release of steam.

“We're wasting our time,” Toronto said softly without looking at me.

After a minute or so of talking, they finally got around to ambling back in our direction. Robot lost the shotgun, throwing it into the backseat of the Suburban. Their faces were so wet by now that they almost looked like a pair of mangy pups. Not that we must've looked much better.

“Lemminger wanted us to go on TV, okay?” Turnip said.

“She tell you her show had been canceled?”

“Yeah, but I knew her from back when she worked for the congressman. She said if she got some taped interviews, she'd have a better chance at pitching it to one of the networks. We told her we'd have to think about it.”

“What did she want you to talk about?” I said.

“What d'ya think, pea brain?” He jerked his thumb toward the main house, which was dark inside, as it had been the night before. “About all of Drummond's extracurricular activities.”

“Such as?”

“She wanted us to start with the high-priced whores. Said something about needing more eyewitness accounts.”

I nodded. Everybody's breath had turned to steam. “How long you been working for Drummond?”

“Seventeen years. Jimmy here just started this year.”

“Did Lemminger give you any idea what else her story was about?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Isn't that enough?”

“How much money she offer you?”

“Ten grand apiece.”

Robot, who'd now proved to the world he could talk, said, “I'm glad we didn't take it.”

“Shut up, Jimmy,” his superior said.

“You been working for this guy seventeen years. You must've seen a lot of things,” I said.

Turnip stared at me like I'd just walked in from some other dimension. “I've seen a lot of things.”

“The congressman's daughter, the one who's missing. He got you guys mixed up in it?”

He shook his head. “We've got nothing to do with that.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I'll just take your word for it, then.”

We stared at one another.

“What about Drummond himself? He doesn't need you guys to pull off something like that.”

“I don't think so,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because he was pretty pissed when he found out we didn't follow her when she left here that night.”

“Could've been an act.”

He shrugged.

“Why was the congressman having you follow his daughters?”

“I just do what I'm told, pal. I've never been paid to ask a lot of questions, like you are.”

“Really? I guess I'll take that as a compliment.”

A look passed through his eyes then. It was a look of cold steel hatred. But there was also another dimension to it—call it professional assessment. As his eyes cut back and forth between me and Toronto, they seemed to accept the reality that the odds of him surviving a violent encounter were not good at the moment.

“You say someone's trying to put the brakes on Lemminger?” Robot said. “Drummond's still a doctor, ain't he? He might've done something like that.”

I sensed Robot's term of employment might soon be coming to an end.

“Tell me more about this break-in you had out here,” I said. Figured I'd play along with my earlier story for consistency.

Turnip crossed his arms. One pro to another. “Last night someone went in through the kitchen. Disabled the alarm and everything. Nice piece of work, actually. Cops said so too. Wouldn't mind catching the guy who did it just to have a beer with him.” A sickly smile crept across his face as he stared at Toronto.

“You check with the congressman to see if anything was missing?”

“Yup. Nothing, he says. Looks like whoever did it was just snooping around.”

I shrugged. “Maybe it was kids or something.”

He chewed on his lip. “Sure, that could've been it. Kids who'd taken a crash course in disabling twenty-thousand-dollar alarms.”

The rain came down harder. The drizzle was turning to wind-driven droplets, an accumulation of which dripped steadily from the brim of my hat.

“So what we appear to have had here, gentlemen, is a professional exchange of information. Would you be in agreement with that?”

“I suppose.”

“Got anything more, Jake?”

Toronto said nothing. I guessed his eyes had never left Turnip, even when Robot had toted the shotgun.

“I suppose that's about all we had to talk to you fellas about, then, for the moment. You might want to let the congressman know we dropped by.”

“Oh, I'll be sure to pass on your regards.”